How I met an Angel at CES

Many exhibitors employ a "booth babe" to draw you into their exhibit so the sales person can catch a word with you. SugarSync, an online file backup system, is no exception.

Although their company logo incorporates a hummingbird, I guess such flighty animals couldn’t be trusted to remain at the booth, so they hired an angel instead. A lovely creature with real feather wings and the allure of a young woman. A cohort commented that all the angels he’d heard of had male names, but we’ll cut the company some slack in this case.

Being a reporter, I try to look for a unique angle, especially at an event such as CES. Therefore, I talked to the angel. Her name was Jessie, not Michael or Gabriel, but an angel she was. Like many young people finding temp jobs in Vegas, she is a college student. Although posing as an integral icon of CES conventions, this booth babe isn’t studying computer electronics. What she hopes to do is use art therapy to work with autistic children.

Caption: Jessie Yunk attracted visitors to SugarSync’s booth at CES

Robb Henshaw, SugarSync’s Communications Czar, said they "selected the image to signify that SugarSync is the ‘angel’ watching over your files in the Cloud." SugarSync claims to provide an instant and secure online file synchronization and backup for your PC, Mac, or Mobile Device. It has earned the attention and accolades of Bloomberg, USA Today, and CNET’s 5 Star Editor’s rating.

SugarSync is represent by a hummingbird in their logo and an angel in their booth

Beyond simple back-up functions, SugarSync will automatically sync files and folders across multiple computers. Documents, photos and music can be accessed from almost any mobile device. You can keep connected to your stuff with an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Sharing folders and files with co-workers or friends is an easy and secure process which you can password protect. Additionally you can restrict access to viewing only or let others edit the files.

At the show, they passed out a card offering a free 5 GB plan without a credit card requirement and no monthly payments. Online they offer a 30-day free trial with 30 GB of storage. Thereafter, the cost is only $4.99 a month or a discounted annual signup for $49.99. A 250 GB plan costs a penny a gigabyte, or $250 for the year.

In addition to their own exhibit, SugarSync also joined Lenovo at CES. Lenovo, like Yunk, is committed to people and social responsibility, focusing on the health and safety of their employees. The company also claims to be "vigilant in protecting the environment across all of our operations worldwide."

Henshaw told us that "Lenovo is now shipping all of their ThinkPad laptops with SugarSync pre-loaded on the laptops to give all of their users one-touch access to the SugarSync Cloud. We spent the week showing people how the Cloud can give you access to all of your files, photos, music and movies from any device."

We can’t say whether accessing the cloud through SugarSync will be a heavenly experience for you or not. But we can attest to the fact that they do have an angel on staff ? one who is in touch with and wants to help those with human frailties.